


Nodus Tollens

by InLoveWithAGhost



Category: VALORANT (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, First Light, Useless Lesbians, icebox, no beta we die like everybody in the first light, phantom supremacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:54:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29168391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLoveWithAGhost/pseuds/InLoveWithAGhost
Summary: She was good enough, once.It was a long, long time ago. Before the First Light, before joining Protocol, before everything.Now she's isolated, alone in a crowd of her comrades, looking in from outside, a radianite wall separating her from them. Reprieve eventually comes in the form of a peppy mechanic, but self doubt, and very literal battle scars aren't easy to overcome.Everything will unravel in the heat of battle, and in the cold of Icebox.
Relationships: Sage/Killjoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Nodus Tollens

  
  


It's a cold night in the lab when Sage finds Killjoy asleep on her computer. " _ Fool _ ", Sage thinks, though fondness is clear on her face, painfully endeared. Softly, she smiles, and looks down at the floor. Sage has never felt deserving, and there's a melancholy that haunts her as she fluidly moves around the room, expertly opening and closing drawers without a sound, retrieving fluffy blankets. It's a routine at this point, her late night voyages (or rather, early morning voyages) into the lab, and more often than not, the engineer is long passed out. 

She really should try and reinforce the idea that beds were made for sleeping, and computers were made for, well, computing, but it's been months, and Sage is in far too deep to use harsh words with Killjoy. It's a shame, really, wanting something you know you can't have, faking your way through every interaction with them, the bittersweet feeling of "I want you, but lord knows I can't have you". She's already resolved to never tell, already decided that it's her cross to bear, and that it would be unfair on the other agents in the protocol to make it so awkward. 

  
  


It’s not being gay that makes it hard. From a young age, she'd known, and from a young age, she hadn't cared. Love is love as far as she's experienced, and gender shouldn't have an impact. 

It's simply the fact that she's her, she does what she does. One hand in life, one hand in blood and gore and violence and death. Nobody should be burdened with her, and her blasphemous abilities. Sure, her rev rate is high, and she's healed countless fatal injuries, but it's not, and never will be enough to make up for all the times she's failed, all the times bodies have gone limp in her hands, all the times her team stares at her, stony eyes silently blaming her for the lost of their comrades.

Sage blames herself too, so she understands where they're coming from. It makes downtime terrible, if she's honest, and it's a big part of the reason that she even started visiting Killjoy. Trying to relax, and socialise with members of the protocol is hard when you shoulder the guilt of essentially killing their friends, and so, when there are no missions, when everyone is on standby, she becomes nocturnal. There's no Phoenix in the gym to stare at her when she trains if it's at night, no Viper to destroy her with a single glare as Sage tries new things in the laboratory. Her private quarters become her sanctuary, and her only respite from the hostile base, but it's a punishment she deserves. It makes her better. The guilt fuels her long nights, her intensive training sessions, and more often than not, her hands are red raw with blisters from over practising her abilities.

Med school was similar, she muses, turning on the radiator, and turning off the fluorescent lights. It was pre First Light, before everything was ruined and she was thrust into a life that she could never fulfill. Nobody was prepared for how fast and how skilled she'd become, how she climbed to the top of every class, and it left her so isolated. Classmates hated her for what she could achieve, for how far she was willing to push herself, and so they ignored her. Tripped her in corridors, purposefully closed doors in her face, hissed words behind her back. It seems like so long ago that she lived that life, so long since normalcy. 

She's practised at medicine, but she's more practised in the art of being lonely - it becomes easier, over time, and then harder to let people back in, so used to the company of only herself. 

Realising she’s been standing, thinking about things of the past, she wipes her eyes and breaks the silence of the room. “Goodnight, Killjoy.”

-

Tightly wrapping her hair into a bun, she pads along the dark corridors of the Protocol base to the gym, moving comfortably in the dark, used to being a shadow. The training regime has a lot of the same elements - she can’t exactly practise healing and reviving without hurting things first, and although she’s expertly skilled in that art, something tells her nobody would volunteer, and she’s hardly willing to practise on animals.

Her worn hands fly into the equally worn leather of the punching bag, and it’s like the anger and pain can pour from her soul out of her knuckles. Muscle memories bring back more memories, and tears fog her eyes as she remembers. 

Valo Protocol basic training was the first time that people had liked her, interacted with her as far back as her memory goes. Sage was far from the best, (although now she had gained some serious muscle mass and combat skills) she’d been without the pressure of excellence, and god, she thrived. Basic training had been her rebirth, her fresh start. “Those were truly the days”, she reminisces. Innocent to the trials of battle then, still fresh to combat, she grew from academia obsessed doctor to certified medic. 

Days spent running and sparring, and then days spent laughing in the mess hall, giggling with Jett, kissing Viper in the private of her standard issue tent, having a prank war with Yoru paint her happiest days. Fun was had as they learned how to harness their new abilities, training for the inevitable war, fear cast aside.

They graduated, and everything went wrong.

  
  


Sage was happy then, but she’s hardened now. There is no time for frivolous matters when you’re liable for lives, and so she hardens her soul, becomes as strong as a mountain. Summoning a hard crystal wall with the flick of a wrist, she seamlessly transitions from punching the bag, to punching the cold surface of the wall.

Sucking the cold from the air, Sage feels her knuckles groan in protest, but dissociating from the pain is one of the first things she learned, so she pushes forward, hardening her soul as well as her hands, coating it in fractals of cyan. The endothermic properties of her abilities is one she’s explored in depth, and so it feels much like punching ice, cooling the blood flow in her hands as she pivots, moves sides to side, seasoned as she moves. Sage is so engrossed in her workout, she doesn't hear the door behind her open, and gently shut.

**Author's Note:**

> i just have a lot of sad sage headcanons. also shes desperately in love with killjoy. lol


End file.
